SOAP/Perl is a collection of Perl modules which provides a simple
and consistent application programming interface (API) to the
Simple Object Access Protocl (SOAP).

To learn more about SOAP, visit the FAQ at:
<URL:http://www.develop.com/soap/soapfaq.htm>

This library provides tools for you to build SOAP clients and servers.

The library contains modules for high-level use of SOAP, but also modules
for lower-level use in case you need something a bit more customized.
The library is factored so that you can

SOAP/Perl uses Perl's object oriented features exclusively. There are
no subroutines exported directly by these modules.

This version of SOAP/Perl supports the SOAP 1.0 specification,
which is an IETF internet draft. See <URL:http://www.ietf.org>
for details.

The main features of the library are:

Contains various reusable components (modules) that can be
used separately or together.

Provides an object oriented model for serializing/deserializing and
sending/receiving SOAP packets (lovingly referred to in some circles
as SOAP bars). Within this framework we currently support access to SOAP
over HTTP, but we're looking to expand to support SOAP over SMTP and
other transports in the future.

Provides a fully object oriented interface.

Supports SOAP 1.0 spec. The current version does not yet handle arrays.

Supports serializing/deserializing of sophisticated object graphs
which may have cycles (a circular queue would serialize just fine,
for instance).

Provides full namespace support for SOAP 1.0, which is strongly recommended
by the spec.

Implements full support for SOAP 1.0 packages, including correctly dealing
with shared references between header and body elements.

Experimental support for extensibility of the serialization/deserialization
architecture has been included; see SOAP::TypeMapper for details.

Supports servers using CGI or Apache+mod_perl. Tested with Apache on Linux
as well as IIS on Windows 2000.

SOAP::EnvelopeMaker takes as input an array of header objects and a single
body object (currently these ``objects'' are simply Perl hashes, eventually
we'll add support for blessed object references as well), and produces as
output an XML stream.

Keith Brown is the original and current author of this work, but
he worked very closely with Don Box in developing a common design
and implementation architecture (Don was building a Java implementation
side-by-side, and Keith and Don worked together in a kind of XP style
of programming - it was fun). GopalK at Microsoft was tremendously
helpful in ferreting out issues in the SOAP spec. Mike Abercrombie
at DevelopMentor (where Keith and Don work) was very supportive
of the effort as well. Thanks Mike!